


This is for everyone

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: Olympic Opening Ceremony (2012)
Genre: Community: 52fandoms, Engineering, Gen, Leftie patriotism, New Year's Resolutions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 19:19:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brunel dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is for everyone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheDivineGoat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDivineGoat/gifts).



Four words. A split second, a rustle of fingers on keys, and they were gone. Out there.

It was his, but it was no good to anybody, kept to himself. He sent it out, let it go.

Somebody else would think of a way to improve it, he was sure. He did not mind. It would always be his, because it would always be everyone's.

He watched the words flash up before him, before the world, and he smiled.

_This is for everyone._

  
Brunel slept, and woke, and slept again, and dreamed. He dreamed, and in his dreams they marched through his mind. A thousand twangling voices, two thousand marching feet. A thousand? No, more. Fifty, a hundred thousand; and still they came, a mighty flood of human footsteps and human voices.

He could not see them; a cloud of coaly smoke filled his vision. All that he had was the thrumming din of those ceaseless, marching feet, one-two, one-two in perfect step (that's dangerous, he thought somewhere in the back of his mind, that could bring the whole bridge down if they don't break step) and the thunder of many voices, crying out in anger, protest, triumph, rejoicing... He could not tell.

_We are the match women. We are the Jarrow lads. The vote! Save the NHS! Stop the war!_

If he had ever known what any of it signified, he had forgotten. He only knew that it was important.

Someone was singing: _I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall the sword sleep in my hand_. He wondered how one was meant to build a city with a sword. He had never been much interested in destruction; all he had ever wanted was to make things work better.

And the noise swelled, and he could not distinguish any of the words now, only the passion that lay under them, the understanding that this was important, and this was for everyone.

_Who are you?_ he cried out, hardly thinking that they might hear him. _Who are you?_

But they heard, and they called back to him: _We are everyone._

Of course.

He woke, and he looked over the triumphs and disasters of his career. Clifton, Saltash, Box. Broad gauge, the atmospheric railway. _Great Western. Great Britain. Great Eastern_. Some had worked better than he could ever have dreamed. Some had failed, though he would not blush to claim them as his own.

And he saw, now, the bright city of London, wider now than he had ever known it in life, like a great sea, with myriad radiant fish darting about it. My trains, he murmured. My tunnels and my bridges. He remembered, vaguely, that they were not all his, that they were the work of other hands and other minds besides his, but that was hardly the point, now. They were his and they were everyone's. He saw the people, thousands, billions of them, going about their business, life and love, on foot and by rail, over the river, under the river, out to the margins of the city and beyond, a world held together with steel rails and cables thin as spider-silk.

This was for everyone, he said, and he smiled.


End file.
